Quote:
Originally Posted by kiddo1987
if they acknowledge there was in fact cheating of some kind, are they suddenly liable or on the hook for any losses incurred by any player that played with Postle or any streamed game?
Highly likely. VerStandig tweeted that he anticipates bringing suit within the next week. That suit wouldn't be worth even the filing fee if only Mike were potentially liable. Any civil suit needs a deep-pocketed defendant to make it worthwhile, and Stones certainly has the $$ to pay up.
Been a while since I was a civil litigator, but two legal concepts jump to mind:
1. Vicarious liability (aka respondeat superior). Stones can be liable for torts committed by its employees. Would not be surprised if the waiver that stream participants signed waived negligence claims, but they generally cant make you waive claims for reckless or intentional torts. If there was an employee of Stones in on the scheme, Stones could be on the hook.
2. Third party premises liability. Premises liability usually deals with physical injury. Think slip and fall at the grocery store. Faulty staircase at the apartment complex. Third party premises liability involves being liable for the reasonably foreseeable bad acts of other people on your property when you failed to exercise reasonable care to prevent those acts. e.g. I get mugged in the dark corner of the parking lot after the property owner fails to replace the burnt-out light and clearly-broken security camera for 4 months, in a high-crime area.
This sort of theory may be used so that even if Mike acted alone, and no single Stones employee were necessarily negligent in and of themselves, Stones could be still be liable for not taking reasonable care generally that its invitees were protected from being cheated and stolen from.
You could honestly do a montage of alllll the times the commentators said something about how Mike's play was insane, how could he know that was a good/bad card, it's like he knows the other players' cards, only Mike and nobody else could make that play, as if the cards are face up, etc.
Ask: Did this prompt them to investigate whether Mike may be cheating? No. They made "Postle is the Poker Lovechild of Jesus and Chuck Norris" memes instead. Seemingly no care whatsoever, let alone reasonable care.
Anyhoo, just wait for the suit to be filed. Read the complaint. You'll see what legal theories are being used to try to collect from Stones.
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